When a work project is small and staff members located near one another, those in charge of the project can easily meet with the staff members to manage work schedules and predict when individual tasks of the project, and thus the project as a whole, is to be completed. Problems arise when projects are larger. These larger projects generally have more staff members assigned to the individual tasks, staff members who are often located at geographically remote locations or who otherwise find it difficult to meet. These individual tasks are often related, with one task depending on the completion of another. A delay in completing one task often has a cascading effect, delaying the completion of other tasks. Moreover, because it is more difficult to meet with these staff members, those in charge have a harder time managing and keeping track of which tasks are behind schedule, negotiating to get the schedule back on track, and therefore determining how long the project is delayed.
Prior art methods of tracking completion dates for tasks in a project include getting verbal commitments from a task leader. These individual commitments were often recorded in meeting minutes or e-mails. Coordinating these individual commitments to determine the completion date for an entire project was thus time consuming and inexact. When the completion date of one task slipped, the commitment dates for all the tasks dependent on it had to be revised. To this end, task leaders for the dependent tasks were notified and meetings were scheduled. During the meetings, managers asked for new completion dates and task leaders asked for more resources, such as money or manpower, to complete the task. After this negotiation process, individual completion dates for all the tasks in a chain of tasks were revised. This entire process was repeated whenever another completion date slipped.
To avoid this lengthy process, task leaders often pushed out their completion dates, to account for any delays that may arise. The resulting artificially extended completion dates generated inaccurate predictions for the completion of the entire project, with the resultant disadvantages in parts procurement, inventory management, marketing analyses, and the like.